The Commentariat -- September 11

Hundreds of thousands of Muslims perform the early morning Eid al-Fitr prayer in the Saudi holy city of Mecca on Friday, Sept. 10, as Muslilms around the world start celebrating the the three-day holiday that marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. AFP-Getty image. CLICK TO SEE LARGER IMAGE.

Having never met a 'Judeo-Christian,' I am always suspicious when that category of beliefs is invoked. -- Michael Sean Winters

Michael Sean Winters in the National Catholic Observer eloquently explains the many reasons that there is no valid comparison between the Cordoba Center & the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz (which Pope John Paul II, a Pole, ordered to be moved). Via Hertzberg....

... Rick Hertzberg of The New Yorker: if Cordoba House must be moved, the best place to move it would be to Ground Zero. Hear him out.

Paul Krugman & Robin Wells in the New York Review of Books on "... the origins of the 2008 crisis; ... the ongoing policy debates about the response to the crisis and its aftermath." (This article will have -- but doesn't yet -- a Part 2.) ...

We believe that the relative absence of proposals to deal with mass unemployment is a case of 'self-induced paralysis' — a phrase that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke used a decade ago, when he was a researcher criticizing policymakers from the outside. There is room for action, both monetary and fiscal. But politicians, government officials, and economists alike have suffered a failure of nerve — a failure for which millions of workers will pay a heavy price. -- Paul Krugman & Robin Wells ...

... Dana Milbank on the right's attacks on 20th-century British economist John Maynard Keynes. First of all, Milbank points out, many of the right's programs are Keynesian. "Or perhaps, more ominously, these Republicans know exactly what they are saying when they reject Keynesian intervention: that the government should do nothing to help the millions out of work or to rebuild confidence in the economy."

With so much of Keynesian theory universally embraced, Republican denunciation of him has a flat-earth feel to it. Will they next demand the abolition of NASA because it's "Galileo on steroids?" Shut down the National Institutes of Health for being a "Hippocratic mistake?" ... Demand a halt to public schools teaching from the "failed Darwinian playbook?" (Oh, wait. They did that last part already.) -- Dana Milbank

Brad Grow of the Washington Post: "A crackdown on reckless mortgage lenders by the Federal Housing Administration has failed to root out several executives with criminal records whose firms continue to do business with the agency in violation of federal law, according to government documents, court records and interviews.... Documents and interviews reveal that more than 34,000 home loans have been issued over the past two years by a dozen FHA-approved lenders that have employed people who were convicted of felonies, banned from the securities industry or previously worked for firms barred by the agency."

According to the AP's "Fact Check," "President Barack Obama told voters repeatedly during the health care debate that the overhaul legislation would bring down fast-rising health care costs and save them money. Now, he's hemming and hawing on that." ...

... BUT Michael Crowley of Time says the "fact-checkers" are ignoring some nuance, & the President has not been inconsistent.

Constitution v. Common Sense

Charles Blow of the New York Times is concerned that "Too much of the debate [over Islam in America] seems to be centered around the sensitivities of terrorists a world away.... But...," he writes, "we are a country in which the construction of a building and the destruction of a book are rights extended to all, even if opposed by most."

Over & above the false equivalency Blow tries to establish between building a cultural center & destroying a holy text, the Constant Weader thinks he misses the underlying point of the discussion:

So what you're saying, I guess, is that the "debate" over the Rev. Cap'n. Crunch and his Koran-torching plans is all about the Constitution.

No, it isn't. Nobody is saying the Koran burning is unconstitutional. It is a common-sense issue. Over in Afghanistan, we're busy bombing innocent Muslims & pretending it's all just an accident & besides, we're doing it for their own goods. Burning their holy book is not just blowing them to bits; it's blowing their fundamental(ist) principles to bits. It's worse than saying, "Kaboom! Whoops, sorry, you're just collateral damage." It means, "Everything about you is abhorrent." The latter is, of course, what many Americans, including the Rev. Cap'n. Crunch, believe.

We all thought it was laughable when George W. Bush, after shooting & bombing his way across two countries, said, "They hate us for our freedom." But, as with many stupid remarks, there is a grain of truth in that one. (a) They hate us because while we exercise our own freedoms, we impinge upon their's. Big-time. (b) They don't "get" our freedoms. The majority of Muslims live in countries where there's no such thing as a bill of rights or freedom of expression. If you want to do something stupid, the government says you can't. If you think of doing something stupid & know the government will lock you up or kill you for it, you don't do it. So the idea that the U.S. government can stand by & allow an American to do something stupid means to most Muslims that the government is cool with the stupid thing. Otherwise, they'd stop it.

Add to that -- few fundamentalists are smart. Some, like the Osama bin Laden gang, are shrewd. But, like the Ever-so-Rev. Jones, they are not good at nuance & they don't get irony. If you think you can explain the concepts underlying the bill of rights to the Taliban, just try it out on a few American high-school dropouts first. See how far you get.

Now, it's true that most American Christians would not put a target on your head if you burned a Bible in front of their church. But some would. They would especially do so if you were a Muslim or a Jew.

Similarly, most Muslims would not put a target on your head if you burned a copy of the Koran. They might despise you, they might feel sorry for you because you were so stupid, but they would let it go. The Muslims who stand up & take notice of stunts like those of Terry Jones are (a) folks who aren't very smart, & (b) folks who are whipped into frenzies by men with political agendas. Consider them the Muslim world's version of the tea party, if you will. It is completely unfair to paint Muslims with a broad brushstroke. Saying, "Muslims believe..." is as unfair as saying, "Americans torched the Koran." No, a couple of nuts did (or planned to do) that.

As for our own vaunted tolerance of bookburning, it was not so long ago that Poppy Bush came out in favor of a Constitutional amendment prohibiting the burning of the American flag. Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who is no dope, has said he thought the Constitution already allowed a law against flag-burning. George Stephanopoulos questioned Barack Obama's patriotism because Obama didn't include a flag pin in his campaign uniform. (Why is it all right, I wonder, to burn a cross but not the flag?) We are not a tolerant nation. We take inanimate symbols way too seriously & read way too much into them. So if uneducated Muslims do the same, this Biblical rejoinder should suffice: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

Voter Malaise -- Whose Fault Is It, Anyway?

Bob Herbert writes that "voters do not feel that the administration and Congress have delivered the fundamental change they were seeking when they swept President Obama and huge Democratic majorities into office nearly two years ago." He argues that "The Democrats are facing an election debacle because they did not respond adequately to their constituents’ most dire needs."

The Times Troll-ops buried my response again, so here it is:

While I am in fundamental agreement with you, the fact is that the Democratic leadership in the Senate was always working from a position of weakness. When they were trying to push through the stimulus bill, Norm Coleman was still holding Al Franken hostage & Arlen Specter was still a Republican. The President hit on that theme in his press conference today. As Ezra Klein pointed out the other day, the shape of the stimulus bill would have been much different if the Party of No had not been almost universally united against it. (In the end, no Republican House member & only three Republican Senators voted for it.) Not only were the Ladies from Maine busily watering down the bill, so did every Democrat with "an agenda."

So it isn't as if Barack Obama & Harry Reid could have waved magic wands & put together a package that would have saved substantially more jobs. The amazing Nancy Pelosi, who had a healthy majority in the House, did of course hold her cats together. We should all be grateful to her.

It was also Pelosi who salvaged what was left of healthcare legislation (according to published reports). And more to your point, it was she (among the leadership) who first heeded the warnings of columnists like you that the Democrats had better get on the jobs, jobs, jobs bandwagon.

Unfortunately, they're still just barely hanging onto the side of the wagon. So many Democrats are willing to sacrifice both jobs & entitlement programs in the name of cutting the deficit, while expressing a willingness to vote instead to increase it by extending tax cuts to the wealthy. Instead of cleaving to these Republican chimera, which will not win them a single vote, Democrats MUST return to the party's basic principles.

The country depends on the Democrats. That, by itself, is a frightening thing. The alternative, of course, would be a disaster.